


And help me understand the best I can

by andiownyousomuch



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Akira appears briefly, Angst, Character Study, Family, Family of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Manga Spoilers, Self-Harm, Stitches, Unbeta'd, slight spoilers for TG :re
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3839347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andiownyousomuch/pseuds/andiownyousomuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine someone you love.</p><p>Imagine someone you love dying.</p><p>For him, it’s difficult to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And help me understand the best I can

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tokyo Ghoul Week √2 , day 4 Lust (Meme Day) - # 5 “Hi I’m auditioning for the role of Kaneki Ken and I’ll be singing Fix You by Cold Play.” (Any song/song lyrics that reminds you of Tokyo Ghoul) – And the song I chose is “Echoes”, by Pink Floyd. Title and fic based on this song.
> 
> \+ Lust (Meme Day) – “You can use any meme and make it into a prompt. Be creative.” Also written for Tokyo Ghoul Kink Meme. OP asked for “Just angst. Pure, heart-wrenching Suzuya-centric angst. Also body stitching. Preferably set post-Anteiku raid.”
> 
> Quote from Dexter, Season 1, Episode 11.

_“no wonder I’ve been so disconnected my entire life._

_if I did have emotions, I’d have to feel…_ this _.”_

 

 

Imagine someone you love.

 

Imagine someone you love dying. 

 

For him, it’s difficult to do so.

 

Words like love, sadness, caring, all of them are more sound and echoes to him, rather than a meaning.

 

(Back then, _there_ , his cries and screams hadn’t meant anything.

 What is the difference, now?)

 

But death, he knows well.

 

Everybody dies. Everybody will die – he’ll die, and Shinohara too. Shinohara had said that himself, to Suzuya, once:  _next time, I might die_.

 

In this instant, hundreds of thousands of people are dying. It happens. It’s not something to feel about.

 

Beneath the skin, people are the same – just flesh and bones and blood. He knows that much; he’s seen it.

 

But about giraffes, well. He wonders.

 

And he imagines their intersections filled with a kaleidoscope of colors – he thinks in yellow and violet, in orange and green. He finds it funny, and tells Shinohara so.

 

(Shinohara makes a funnier face. Suzuya laughs.)

 

His imagination is wild, though he still thinks it is difficult to find colors in the world. He manages to find them in blood, in smashed ants, in Shinohara’s eyes, in a balloon lost to the sky.

 

…So imagine someone you love.

 

Imagine someone you love dying.

 

For him, it’s difficult to do so.

 

But he sees: Shinohara on the ground,  blood melted in the water, the Owl marking the man as Suzuya’s equal, and he recalls,  _people are the same, just flesh and bones and blood_ , and as he watches one of Shinohara’s limbs describing a circle in the air, he thinks,  _Shinohara-san and I, we’re the same._

 

We’re the same, and he feels nothing; it’s not his wound nor his blood nor his leg.

 

(Moments ago, Shinohara was apologizing to him, crying for him. He didn’t understand.  _Why are you crying?_ , he asked.  _I don’t feel the pain. It’s not your wound nor your blood nor your leg, so why are you crying?_ )

 

There’s distance between him and Shinohara, there’s a touch between that thingand Shinohara, and Suzuya remembers remembers  _remembers_ , Shinohara had said that himself, hadn’t he,

 

_next time, I might die._

 

It’s when Suzuya hears a terrible and growling sound – a sound that begins deep in his bones and rasps and echoes through anyone nearby, and it’s not exactly a word, nor exactly a scream, but something more visceral, and it carries  _if something happens to Shinohara-san, I know you will regret,_  it carries  _I’d be sad if you died, Juuzou,_  it carries  _I’m sorry, Juuzou._

 

And then, he  _feels_  his blood dripping on the ground, his hair damped on his neck, his face wet from his eyes and the sky; and in that split second, with a clarity that he’d never felt before, he recognizes that awful sound as his own voice, and he can finally understand the meaning behind Shinohara’s tears.

 

And it hurts.

 

The sharp air in his lungs.

 

It hurts.

 

Fighting for life.

 

His.

 

Shinohara’s.

 

It hurts.

 

It’s like been born again.

 

And from his throat, and from his eyes

 

comes

 

a cry.

 

He fights and

 

if that thing laughs at him, if someone tells him to run, and if his blood runs in the ground, if his body gives in the wounds, he doesn’t mind,  _he doesn’t care_.

 

He thinks “never,”

 

He says “never”.

 

(Silly promises and silly plans come to his mind. Of drinking together, when he gets older.

He wouldn’t forget the shine in Shinohara’s eyes when he’d said that.)

 

“Never,” he repeats, even when the darkness envelops him, dragging his every sense.

 

When he wakes up, a world full of white hurts his eyes.

 

Scenes cross his mind, cold sweat clings to his body. He gets out of the bed, only to fall, for the loss of balance, for the absence of a leg.

 

 _Ah_ , he remembers.

 

The sound of his fall alerts the nurse monitoring the corridor and, soon, she helps Suzuya to stand on his foot, asking him if he’s okay.

 

But the only answer she receives is:

 

_“And Shinohara-san?”_

 

…Imagine someone you love.

 

Imagine someone you love dying.

 

He doesn’t have to, now.

 

And for him, it’ difficult to –  _see_.

 

Shinohara is a man of big stature, but lying on the hospital bed, with white sheets wrapping him, he seems fragile. Machines keep Shinohara breathing. Doctors say something about blood loss, vegetative state, coma.

 

To Suzuya, it appears that Shinohara is only sleeping peacefully.

 

The days pass by. Suzuya is a ghost of himself. He’s already white, pale. But he walks as he isn’t there, but in a nightmare-limbo, a guilty grasp upon his chest.

 

And Shinohara just – breaths in. Out.

 

In.

 

Out.

 

And Suzuya draws the red lines in his arm –

 

in,

 

out.

 

Paths of blood, strings of fate stitched in his skin.  _This is how I fixed myself._

 

_But it isn’t working anymore._

 

The needle pierces his skin, again, and a red thread spatters his hip.

 

 _“_ _What are you doing, Suzuya-san?!”_

 

A white hand takes the needle out of his hands, with force.

 

“I already told you to not do these kind of things… You… you could caught an infection, Suzuya-san.”

 

_Ah, this gaze…_

 

He’d almost missed it. Everyone in the hospital has looked at him with pity, compassion. But the nurse’s eyes are now judgmental, and scared of him.

 

It’s a good thing that something familiar has finally happened.

 

She doesn’t understand – and he’s strangely grateful for that.

 

(Shinohara wouldn’t understand, too.

…But he would never judge Suzuya; and he had never judged Suzuya.

While all eyes were filled with judgement, his eyes, on the other hand, were always, always full of acceptance.)

 

It takes a few more days before he has the courage to visit Shinohara when his wife is there.

 

He sits by Shinohara’s side, and waits for her. The silence and the slow, steady rise and fall of Shinohara’s chest are almost unbearable.

 

“Juuzou?”

 

Shinohara’s voice whispers to him,  _place you right hand on the top of your belly, and lower down your head…_

 

_one_

 

_two-_

 

Suzuya bows, because this is what Shinohara had taught him, and because he can’t face his wife.

 

“I’m sorry,” and his voice is rough from the lack of use, the medicine-dryness, tightness-soul. “This wouldn’t have happened if I did my job properly.”

 

He waits.

 

He doesn’t know what for; but he needs this. He needs to do this.

 

“Raise you head, Juuzou. I’m the wife of an investigator. No matter what happens, I’m ready for it.” A gentle, yet firm hand takes his. “That person… he thought of you as his own son,” she smiles, sadly, kindly, as if saying, _you’re the only one who can understand how I feel now._

 

Suzuya looks right into her eyes, and sees himself reflected on them.

 

 _Ah_ , he realizes.  _This person and I, we’re the same_.

 

And somehow, something inside of him seems less heavy.

 

On the next day, he accepts Doctor Chigyou’s offer to have the prosthetic leg.

 

Mado-chan visits him. She’s broken, too, just like he’s has been, though she’s came uninjured from the 20th Ward Raid. She pushes his wheelchair around the hospital and, during his physiotherapy, helps him to walk with his new leg. “I still like your stitches,” she tells him one day, in a quiet tone, and with the hint of a smile.

 

He and Shinohara’s wife share the vigils by the investigator’s bedside, hand in hand. Sometimes, she brings him some sweets. “You’re too thin, you know,” she says, teasingly, fondly. And though he doesn’t feel any hunger, he eats the candies anyway.

 

Step

by

step,

 

after a few months,

 

he does not wander anymore, and he’s able to walk by himself.

 

One day, Shinohara will wake up. So Suzuya dyes his hair black, because he knows that Shinohara will find it funny, his way of trying to be more proper. So he fights, because he still has two arms, a leg and a prosthetic one, and his both eyes open. So he visits him on the hospital every day, and kisses him goodnight on the cheek, and kisses him sleep well on the forehead.  _My salvation_ , he thinks,  _is just to sleep and have a happy dream_.

 

He doesn’t know if his acts mean anything. But he does them anyway – Shinohara gave him a meaning and, whatever it is, he embraces it.


End file.
